CNN replaces its staff with its customers

What’s the point of a blog if you can’t throw around some semi-informed, partially qualified opinions from time to time? Let’s call it blogger’s prerogative. Here goes.

I notice CNN offloaded about a dozen photo staff this week. The powers that be put it down to the increasing quality of reader submitted pictures through iReport and the like. Well, I can’t say I believe them. It’s just far more likely to be a decision made on the basis of the cost of reader submitted content than the quality of it. But hey, it’s a press release and they’re saying what the market wants to hear I suppose.

We’re all well aware of the economic strife news media finds itself in the world over. But in light of the CNN announcement it’s worth reiterating how it got there: reduced audiences and depleting advertising revenues, with both factors attributable to the influences of the internet.

To say publishers look back at that point in the mid-nineties, when they decided to provide their online services at no cost to readers and at reduced cost to advertisers, and that they consider it a mistake is quite the understatement. And it accounts for the present day move to “premium” tablet publications and “pay-walls” for websites.

Well, someone should tell CNN. When you peddle a free or low-quality commodity audiences rightly wonder why they should ever pay for it. Likewise there’s less value in brand association for advertisers.

There’s a reason Qantas rarely issues free upgrades and never discounts them, and that Coles doesn’t give away its perishables at closing time, or that Apple pretty much never publicises discounts on its products. It’s to maintain the perception of value.

In journalism if you dismiss photographers and outsource their work to the public there’s an added problem. You might outsource the process but you can’t delegate your accountability. You just have to trust that stranger (the one you’re not paying) isn’t setting you up for a fall and as some of them will try to, you must constantly guard against it.

So a publisher is happy to settle for a poorer product and accept a hit to its brand, while constantly looking over its shoulder for scams and for hoaxes, hey?

CNN should cut the pretense and admit they’re just cutting costs.